At length, in an obscure street that branched from Kearney Street, near the corner of the Plaza, she came upon an illuminated sign, bearing the inscription, “Beds for the Night, 15 and 25 cents.”
Fifteen cents! Could she afford it? It would leave her with only that much more, that much between herself and a state of privation of which she dared not think; and, besides, the forbidding look of the building frightened her. It was dark, gloomy, dirty, a place suggestive of obscure crimes and hidden terrors. For twenty minutes or half an hour, she hesitated, walking twice and three times around the block. At last, she made up her mind. Exhaustion such as she had never known, weighed like lead upon her shoulders and dragged at her heels. She must sleep. She could not walk the streets all night. She entered the door-way under the sign, and found her way up a filthy flight of stairs. At the top, a man in a blue checked “jumper” was filling a lamp behind a high desk. To him Minna applied.
“I should like,” she faltered, “to have a room—a bed for the night. One of those for fifteen cents will be good enough, I think.”
“Well, this place is only for men,” said the man, looking up from the lamp.
“Oh,” said Minna, “oh—I—I didn't know.”
She looked at him stupidly, and he, with equal stupidity, returned the gaze. Thus, for a long moment, they held each other's eyes.
“I—I didn't know,” repeated Minna.
“Yes, it's for men,” repeated the other. She slowly descended the stairs, and once more came out upon the streets.
And upon those streets that, as the hours advanced, grew more and more deserted, more and more silent, more and more oppressive with the sense of the bitter hardness of life towards those who have no means of living, Minna Hooven spent the first night of her struggle to keep her head above the ebb-tide of the city's sea, into which she had been plunged.
Morning came, and with it renewed hunger. At this time, she had found her way uptown again, and towards ten o'clock was sitting upon a bench in a little park full of nurse-maids and children. A group of the maids drew their baby-buggies to Minna's bench, and sat down, continuing a conversation they had already begun. Minna listened. A friend of one of the maids had suddenly thrown up her position, leaving her “madame” in what would appear to have been deserved embarrassment.